Reading comprehension

Reading comprehension is the ability to process text, understand its meaning, and to integrate with what the reader already knows. Fundamental skills required in efficient reading comprehension are knowing meaning of words, ability to understand meaning of a word from discourse context, ability to follow organization of passage and to identify antecedents and references in it, ability to draw inferences from a passage about its contents, ability to identify the main thought of a passage, ability to answer questions answered in a passage, ability to recognize the literary devices or propositional structures used in a passage and determine its tone, to understand the situational mood (agents, objects, temporal and spatial reference points, casual and intentional inflections, etc.) conveyed for assertions, questioning, commanding, refraining etc. and finally ability to determine writer's purpose, intent and point of view, and draw inferences about the writer (discourse-semantics). Reading comprehension is the ability to process text, understand its meaning, and to integrate with what the reader already knows. Fundamental skills required in efficient reading comprehension are knowing meaning of words, ability to understand meaning of a word from discourse context, ability to follow organization of passage and to identify antecedents and references in it, ability to draw inferences from a passage about its contents, ability to identify the main thought of a passage, ability to answer questions answered in a passage, ability to recognize the literary devices or propositional structures used in a passage and determine its tone, to understand the situational mood (agents, objects, temporal and spatial reference points, casual and intentional inflections, etc.) conveyed for assertions, questioning, commanding, refraining etc. and finally ability to determine writer's purpose, intent and point of view, and draw inferences about the writer (discourse-semantics). Ability to comprehend text is influenced by reader's skills and their ability to process information. If word recognition is difficult, students use too much of their processing capacity to read individual words, which interferes with their ability to comprehend what is read. There are many reading strategies to improve reading comprehension and inferences, including improving one's vocabulary, critical text analysis (intertextuality, actual events vs. narration of events, etc.) and practicing deep reading. People learn comprehension skills through education or instruction and some learn by direct experiences. Proficient reading depends on the ability to recognize words quickly and effortlessly. It is also determined by an individual's cognitive development, which is 'the construction of thought processes'. There are specific characteristics that determine how successfully an individual will comprehend text, including prior knowledge about the subject, well-developed language, and the ability to make inferences from methodical questioning & monitoring comprehension like: 'Why is this important?' and 'Do I need to read the entire text?' are examples of passage questioning. Instruction for comprehension strategy often involves initially aiding the students by social and imitation learning, wherein teachers explain genre styles and model both top-down and bottom-up strategies, and familiarize students with a required complexity of text comprehension. After the contiguity interface, the second stage involves gradual release of responsibility wherein over time teachers give students individual responsibility for using the learned strategies independently with remedial instruction as required. The final stage involves leading the students to a self-regulated learning state with more and more practice and assessment. The teacher as reading instructor is a role model of a reader for students, demonstrating what it means to be an effective reader and the rewards of being one. Reading comprehension is the level of understanding of a text/message. This understanding comes from the interaction between the words that are written, and how they trigger knowledge outside the text/message. Comprehension is a 'creative, multifaceted process' dependent upon four language skills: phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. There are 7 essential skills for reading comprehension: Decoding, Fluency, Vocabulary, Sentence Construction and Cohesion, Reasoning and background knowledge, and Working memory and attention Reading comprehension involves two levels of processing, shallow (low-level) processing and deep (high-level) processing. Deep processing involves semantic processing, which happens when we encode the meaning of a word and relate it to similar words. Shallow processing involves structural and phonemic recognition, the processing of sentence and word structure, i.e. first-order logic, and their associated sounds. This theory was first identified by Fergus I. M. Craik and Robert S. Lockhart. Comprehension levels are observed through neuroimaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). fMRI's are used to determine the specific neural pathways of activation across two conditions, narrative-level comprehension and sentence-level comprehension. Images showed that there was less brain region activation during sentence-level comprehension, suggesting a shared reliance with comprehension pathways. The scans also showed an enhanced temporal activation during narrative levels tests indicating this approach activates situation and spatial processing. In general, neuroimaging studies have found that reading involves three overlapping neural systems: networks active in visual, orthography-phonology (Angular gyrus), and semantic functions (Anterior temporal lobe with Broca's and Wernicke's area). However, these neural networks are not discrete, meaning these areas have several other functions as well. The Broca's area involved in executive functions helps the a reader to vary depth of reading comprehension and textual engagement in accordance with reading goals. Reading comprehension and vocabulary are inextricably linked together. The ability to decode or identify and pronounce words is self-evidently important, but knowing what the words mean has a major and direct effect on knowing what any specific passage means while skimming a reading material. It has been shown that students with a smaller vocabulary than other students comprehend less of what they read. It has been suggested that to improve comprehension, improving word groups, complex vocabularies such as homonyms or words that have multiple meanings, and those with figurative meanings like idioms, similes, collocations and metaphors are a good practice.